dear all,
just combed thru the mailing archives at ltsp, the documentation, and
searched thru google. need help on the following unresolved problem:
objective: old pcs with small hard-disks (500mb, 4gb to 8gb) are to be
used for merely booting into ltsp. instructions are *not* to boot from
NIC-based ROM, or from floppy, or from LILO or GRUB. just the hard disk.
one pc, with a 4gb hard disk, does successfully boot into LTSP without
using lilo.
this was how this had been achieved:
1) the correct *.zdsk was downloaded from rom-o-matic into a
sub-directory.
2) using the usual cat /yaddayadda/*.zdsk >/dev/fd0 a floppy boot was
created, that was tested using a floppydrive on the targetted
workstation.
3) the floppy boots the workstation into LTSP without errors.
4) some forgotten *magic* sequence of commands and techniques were then
used to make the hard-disk behave like a boot floppy. in principle, the
*.zdsk image was used (but not any *.zlilo with lilo or grub installs)
to flatter the hard disk into thinking it has slimmed down to a floppy,
and a permanently attached one at that.
:-)
5) works ever since.
problem is, what is that *magic*?
fyi, the Rom-o-matic created image that works is:
/yadda/eb-5.2.0-rtl8139.zdsk
and am using ltsp3.0
so far, i have tried the following, without success:
1) connected the 8GB hardisk to hdb, but left it unmounted.
#cat /yadda/eb-5.2.0-rtl8139.zdsk >/dev/hdb
no success. the workstation finds no ROM to get booted.
2) shove the working floppy into its drive.
# cat /dev/fd0 >/dev/hdb
same error.
3) using fdisk, deleted all partitions, leaving it unformatted.
#cat /yadda/eb-5.2.0-rtl8139.zdsk >/dev/hdb
same error.
4) again deleted all partitions, then with the floppy:
# cat /dev/fd0 >/dev/hdb
same error.
5) deleted all partitions, created a new primary partition, hdb1. made
it active. formatted it to ext3, mounted it to test, then unmounted,
then:
# cat /dev/fd0 >/dev/hdb1
same error.
whew!
a google-search did point me to an old web-page somewhere, but those
instructions weren't relevant or helpful.
??
LL
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